Anyone walking down Grafton Street in Dublin eight or nine years ago might have been stopped in their tracks by the sight of four long-haired buskers playing traditional-sounding Irish music on acoustic instruments with the energy of a metal band.
“We busked pretty much solely for the first two or three years this band existed,” says Conor ‘Dock’ Dockery, guitarist with The Scratch, the former buskers in question. “We realised we were making more money than we’d ever made in our old band.”
The Scratch’s recently released third album, Pull Like A Dog, captures that raucous unlikely collision of two worlds. The Dublin four-piece – completed by drummer/singer Daniel ‘Lango’ Lang, bassist Cathal McKenna and guitarist Gaz Regan – are the missing link between The Dubliners and Metallica, a bunch of metal kids who hit on what Dockery calls “this weird little sound”.
The Scratch’s roots lay in Red Enemy, a knotty progressive metal band who released a couple of EPs and a self-titled album in the first half of the 2010s before splitting around 2016.
“We just got a bit jaded with that whole scene,” says Dockery, who founded The Scratch with ex-Red Enemy bandmates Lang and guitarist Jordan O’Leary (the latter left in 2024, replaced by Regan). “It felt like it wasn’t really serving us creatively.”
The Scratch was a complete left turn. They were aware of traditional Irish music, but only in so much as it’s ever-present in the background for anyone who grew up in the country.
“We were discovering that whole side of music for the first time,” says Dockery. “It was a craving for something new.”
Those early busking performances, with the band lined up around Lang as he banged on a makeshift box drum, captured The Scratch’s exhilarating energy. Viral videos of them playing on the street during the annual Rory Gallagher Festival in 2017 boosted their profile. “We could tell it was connecting with people in a way that we’d never experienced with the old band,” says Dockery.
Live, they bring the party every time – Dockery recalls the band sparking an unlikely ‘wall of death’ melee at a Belgian festival a couple of years ago. And the three albums they’ve made – the new one plus 2020’s Couldn’t Give A Rats and 2023 follow-up Mind Yourself – bottle their humour and pirate charisma. But there’s a depth of emotion to The Scratch’s music that makes them more than just the soundtrack to sinking 12 pints of Guinness in quick succession.
“We’re not doing this just to be a party band,” says Dockery. “We’re not trying to be cool or mysterious. We’re just trying to be ourselves and create a space for people at our gigs where they can be themselves too.”
Pull Like A Dog is out now via Music For Nations.
